Festivals

Three Ljubljana-based concert cycles and their organizers are joining forces at a special event on 14 October: Zavod Sploh’s Confine Aperto, Miha Zadnikar’s Defonija and KUD Mreža’s FriForma are sharing an exciting evening with two sets of music as a side event of this year’s City Of Women / Mesto žensk festival, and presenting outstanding female artists in the main hall of Španski borci.

Both duo Nabelóse with Greek french horn player Elena Kakaliagou and Austrian pianist Ingrid Schmoliner, plus the trio of French vocalist-clarinettist Isabelle Duthoit, Mexican Paetzold recorder player Angélica Castelló and French pianist Sophie Agnel are making their debut appearance in Slovenia.

In the words of a review, the duo of Elena Kakaliagou and Ingrid Schmoliner “lights a fire in a remote mountain hut, sits us down in front of an ancient fireplace and wraps us up in a warm blanket”. The guests for the first set of the evening move from drone and folk to sovereign elements of freely improvised music, dealing with the position of women in Central European and Greek culture in a completely unique way, using their instruments as well as their voices. Top-class art that may be centuries old or is perhaps just being born – in this very moment. Magical!

We are unsure whether the music of the trio that will perform in the second part of the evening “comes from heaven or hell” – writes the Artacts Festival’s programme guide. Sophie Agnel tickles the ivory, dives deep into the piano’s gut and finally offers us a special voyage to space. Isabelle Duthoit first screams, cries, gargles and curses, then grabs her clarinet only to wring and stretch it, producing sounds which, with eyes closed, we cannot discern from her own voice. And finally comes Angélica Castelló, an amazing sound designer, adding electroacoustic pearls to this masterful ménage à trois. This is nothing else, but witchcraft!

See more City Of Women / Mesto žensk events at the annual festival’s website.

14 October 2018, Friday 21.00 – Španski borci, Ljubljana

The 4. Art Festival of Recycling and DIY Culture Reciklart will take place from 7 August, Tuesday until 11 August, Saturday. Most of the programs are taking place in front of Alkatraz Gallery in Metelkova, Ljubljana.

There will be five days of creating, recycling, enjoying music, reflecting, contemplating and much more! All the events of the festival are free of charge. You are kindly inivted to apply for workshops at: festival.reciklart@gmail.com

In case of bad weather the programs will be moved inside of Alkatraz Gallery.

When I was born, I had no name, surname, nationality, citizenship, gender! I am still that one that was before! Am I!? Unseen wounds cracked my inner skin. Borders paralyzed my wishes.  (Qëndresë Deda, excerpt from Monologue, Dialogue, Trialogue)

“What Are The Words Doing? is the title of the exhibition and performance by Qëndresë Deda, an artist from Kosovo that currently lives and studies in Ljubljana. In her work, she usually combines different media, from photography, drawings, writing and design, to video, and often puts herself in a role of an object and a subject simultaneously. Although her works appear to be very personal, intimate even, she deals with the phenomena of her immediate surroundings, as she describes it.

Her new work, about to be presented at the 19th International Feminist and Queer Festival Red Dawns, is intertwined with her own personal writings, poetry and graffiti, in which she asks questions concerning identity, freedom and restrictions that are imposed on people in present-day society. Thoughts, sentences and words will appear on the windows of the Gallery at the start of the performance. The artwork will be transformed by the actions of the artist and other performers, who will co-create the meanings, using their bodies and voices. What there will be left afterwards is an echo of past actions, but also an artwork in itself.

The spoken words will fade away, leaving only the written ones. Just like the words we say aloud cease to exist in a form of a sound after spoken (if not recorded), but find ways to leave an impact in realms of invisible; in the minds of listeners. That is why Qëndresë Deda describes the work as sound utopia of a real space inside and outside oneself.

This corresponds with the specific situation of the Night Window Display Gallery Pešak, where one can observe exhibitions only from the outside, while the artworks are closed inside the building. The artist plays between the private, intimate realm of thoughts and public, outer world, situating words on the glass of the window, and creating a link between the two.” – Anabel Černohorski

Qëndresë Deda (1988, Pristina) graduated from Graphic Design at the University of Pristina. Her works have been shown in several solo and group exhibitions in Pristina (L’Espace Culturel Francais; Tetris – Space for Manipulation; Traffic Gallery, Stacion – Centre for Contemporary Art, Art Gallery of Kosovo). In 2014, she had an exhibition at KC Tobačna 001 in Ljubljana, where she was a residence artist. In 2015, she had an exhibition at Villa Romana, Florence, also a part of artist-in-residence program. In the same year, her works were part of the 31^st Biennial of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana. She is a two-time finalist of the Artists of tomorrow Award (Stacion – Centre for Contemporary Art, Pristina). Currently, she is a student at the University of Ljubljana, the Academy of Fine Arts and Design – Department of Video and New media.

You are kindly invited to the opening performance on 3 March, Saturday at 7.30 pm at Gallery Night Display Pešak.

City Of Women, FriForma and Defonija are inviting you to a musically rich, structurally and thematically colourful evening of free improvised music on 12 October, Thursday at 9.30 pm to Klub Gromka in Ljubljana. Our guests come from different environments, having travelled different paths to their own improvising techniques, belonging to different generations, contemporary musical moments and most common social situations. Some of them have already performed together, other combinations we shall hear for the first time.

In six shorter appearances in different combinations, the following artists will be presented:

· Ute Wassermann (D) – voice
· Elisabeth Harnik (A) – piano
· Nina Polaschegg (A) – double bass
· Luisa Tucciariello (I) – voice
· Alison Blunt (GB) – violin
· Hannah Marshall (GB) – cello

The evening will conclude with the performance of the participants of the workshop conducted during the festival by Ute Wasserman and joined by vocalist Luisa Tucciariello.

12 October 2017, Thursday 21.30 – Klub Gromka, Ljubljana

Experimental film about unwanted childlessness in a world where normative heterosexual relationships dictate who can become parents and in what way. When it comes to reproduction, our merciless bodies reduce us to merely a set sex or given gender. But the longing for children is not limited to our bodies, and the possibility of pregnancy can be gifted, shared and undertaken together.

The author on the project: “The darkness is about being able to focus on our bodies and our body parts, while providing the necessary intimacy required for the film. Nakedness without exhibitionism. Bodies without ownership. Body parts belonging to a large family body instead of individuals. The idea of filming loose body parts, both incoherent, disconnected from each other and intertwined, felt important for the film. Important for us. Important for the notion of the family. That there are many who belong in different ways. I knew early on that the film would be very dark, with inconsistent and moving light, and would by all means be filmed in Super 8. These three distinct starting points formed the basis of the film project in 2011.” – galerijalkatraz.org

Your are kindly invited to the opening of Spermwhore, a film installation by Anna Linder, on 8 October, Sunday at 7 pm at Alkatraz Gallery. The project is a part of 23rd International Festival Of Contemporary Art – City Of Women.

The opening talk will be held by Anna Linder and Jasmina Šepetavc.

On display: 8 October 2017 – 15 October 2017